The sixth edition of the Coimbatore Marathon was flagged off on Sunday morning from VOC Park by Sujit Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Traffic. It was a sea of red that set off to run a half marathon, a 10 k, and a 5 k.
The previous day had seen thousands of participants head to Codissia Trade Fair Complex to collect their running bibs. The venue buzzed with photo booths, tattoo corners, sports gear stalls, and health drink sellers. The routes for the three categories of the event were highlighted on the wall. Most importantly, there were cancer survivors sharing their stories about living with cancer and then beating it. Coimbatore Marathon has since its inception, been a fund raiser for the Coimbatore Cancer Foundation (CCF). Over the years it has raised ₹ 1.53 crore to support CCF’s mission of spreading awareness about cancer, holding screening camps, and providing counselling support to cancer patients and their caregivers.
Each of the 15, 000 and more runners on Sunday ran for a good cause and it reflected the motto of the Marathon this year: “My Fitness My City My Cause”.
According to one of the organisers Saraswathy Natarajan, “It was an amazing turnout. We had 2,152 runners in the half Marathon category, 5, 005 running in the 10 K category, and 8, 082 in the 5 K who had registered. We reckon 90 % of them turned out to run.” She adds that nearly 9, 500 registrations came from the Corporates alone.
Race Director Ramesh Ponnuswamy termed the event an all round success. “The lead up was fraught with uncertainties around the weather. But in the end it was worth every sleepless moment. Nothing speaks louder about the support Coimbatoreans have for this event and the cause it espouses than the huge turnout. Many people clocked their personal best today.”
Speaking of the huge support of the volunteers, another organiser S. Balaji said there were 1, 200 of them from the NCC, Home Guards, The Air Force and Navy, CRPF and many corporate and social service organisations. “There were school bands from Jayendra Saraswati, Bridgewood PS, Jaycee School and SBOA MHSS. Madhampatty Rangaraj catered the post-run breakfast of Pongal, vadai, idlis and coffee.”
The first in each category of the marathon were:
Open category: Half marathon (21.1 km) - men: Rajkumar (01:12:02) and women: V. Soniya V (01:32:22), 10 km marathon - men: M. Sathish Kumar (00:32:13) and women: S. Sowmya (00:38:34)
Veteran category: Half marathon - men: A. Baba (01:29:35), women: Kalai Mani (02:01:04), 10 km marathon - men: Udhaya Kumar (00:38:35), women: E. SubhaLakshmy (00:57:44)
